scholarly journals Creationism and the Teaching of Evolution in Poland

2010 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 614-620 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bartosz Borczyk
Keyword(s):  
Intelligent Design ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Political Economic

Abstract For many years, the creationist movement in Poland was so marginal that the term “creationism” and its foundations were largely unknown within society. Nevertheless, at the end of the 1980s and beginning of the 1990s, the country underwent rapid political, economic, and sociological transformation. As part of the reaction, many ideas previously censored by the Communist regime became fashionable. This was also partly true for the creationist movement. However, creationism did not gain high acceptance within society, partly because Poland is predominantly a Catholic country, and Catholic doctrine does not support literal understanding of the Bible. At the moment, Intelligent Design creationists are emerging in Poland, and numerous creationist organizations are increasing their activity. This goes together with the weakening of evolutionary teaching in Polish schools.

scholarly journals Conjectural History and Scottish Philosophers

2006 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger L. Emerson
Keyword(s):  
Developmental Process ◽  
Historical Materialism ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Economic Dynamic ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Intellectual Milieu ◽  
Conjectural History ◽  
Naturalistic Account ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Travel Accounts

Abstract "Conjectural history" is used here to "denote any rational or naturalistic account of the origins and development of institutions, beliefs or practices not based on documents or copies of documents or other artifacts contemporary (or thought to be contemporary) with the subjects studied." Many recent historians have focused on the apparent emergence within Scotland of a large number of sophisticated conjectural histories around ¡750, and analysed them within the framework of a Marxist-oriented social science. This paper argues that such a perspective is "inappropriate and misguided." If one looks at these works as an outcome of what went before, rather than a forerunner of what came after, they begin to lose their modernistic flavour. Conjectural histories of the Scottish Enlightenment were based essentially on four sources: the Bible and its commentaries, the classics, modern works of philosophy and travel accounts. Each had an influence on the works produced. The parallels between the Biblical and the secular conjectural histories are, for example, instructive and it is clear that no Scottish historian could consistently hold a doctrine of economic deter- minism or historical materialism and still reconcile this position with his Calvinist beliefs. Works such as Lucretius' On the Nature of Things had influenced the con- jectural histories of the Renaissance and continued to be used by the Scots just as they were by the English deists, whose speculations about historical development were also helpful to Scottish writers. Travel accounts provided information concerning mankind at various stages of civilization, but no explanation of the developmental process. While the study of history was a popular pursuit during the Scottish Enlightenment this inte rest followed trends on the continent and elsewhere. Furthermore, an examination of the great works of this period suggests that they were firmly based on the writings of scholars of a generation before. Certainly the leading writers of the "golden age" from roughly 1730 to 1790 gave a more sophisticated, detailed and elaborate treatment cf these ideas, but the sources, problems and concepts which they elucidated were not new. In their analyses, they did not employ historical materialism or economic determinism, though they were undoubtedly more political-economic, dynamic and secular in their attitude. They desired change for Scotland out of a patriotic regard for the comparative backwardness of their country, but the causes and cures for that condition were not fundamentally economic in nature. If these writings are examinedas a unit, and seen in context, the conjectural historians of the Scottish Enlightenment appear to be an understandable outcome of their intellectual milieu. The author supports this conclusion by a close examination of the work of Hume and Smith. This further explicates his theme that a nascent economic determinism was not the impetus for this writing that recent historians have read into these works.

scholarly journals Symposium: ‘The BRICS, Global Governance, and Challenges for South–South Cooperation in a Post-Western World’

2021 ◽  
pp. 019251212110522
Author(s):  
Niall Duggan ◽  
Bas Hooijmaaijers ◽  
Marek Rewizorski ◽  
Ekaterina Arapova
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Emerging Markets ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
Western World ◽  
The Past ◽  
Power Shift ◽  
Global Power ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Political Economic

Over the past decades, the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) countries have experienced significant economic growth. However, their political voices in global governance have not grown on par with their economic surge. The contributions to the symposium ‘The BRICS, Global Governance, and Challenges for South–South Cooperation in a Post-Western World’ argue there is a quest for emerging markets and developing countries to play a more significant role in global governance. There is a widening gap between the actual role of emerging markets and developing countries in the global system and their ability to participate in that system. However, for the moment, various domestic and international political-economic challenges limit this quest. To understand why this is the case, one should understand the BRICS phenomenon in the broader context of the global power shift towards the Global South.

The Hundred-Hour War, 1969: A Military History

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos Pérez Pineda
Keyword(s):  
El Salvador ◽  
Central American ◽  
Political Polarization ◽  
Peace Agreement ◽  
Military Alliance ◽  
Decisive Victory ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The One ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
The Military

The 1969 conflict between Honduras and El Salvador signaled the weakening of the Central American economic integration process; marked an end to an era of economic growth, industrialization, and political openness; and inaugurated a new chapter, characterized by growing political polarization and violence. There is a prevailing consensus about the significance that this conflict had as a breaking point and historical turnaround. The roots of the crisis between both states, commercial partners and members of a regional political-military alliance, lie in the drastic changes introduced by the Honduran government in its migratory and agrarian policies. These changes sought to contain the massive migration from El Salvador and to reduce by all means necessary, including by violent dispossession, the Salvadoran presence in Honduras. A ferocious anti-Salvadoran media campaign preceded and accompanied the massive expulsion of Salvadorans. Alarmed by the destabilizing effect that a return en masse of poor Salvadoran peasants could bring to the country, and facing an intransigent Honduran government, the leadership in El Salvador decided to resolve the conflict through war. Once this began, both countries mobilized their military forces for over one hundred hours of bloody fighting in July 1969. Although neither country won a decisive victory on the battlefield, at the moment the ceasefire was imposed the military situation amply favored El Salvador. The political, economic, military, and diplomatic consequences of the war had a profound impact during the 1970s and beyond the signing of the peace agreement early in the 1980s. On the one hand, the recounting of the war, full of falsifications and half-truths, continues to play an important role in Honduran nationalism. On the other hand, for Salvadorans the war is an almost forgotten memory.

Divine Justice and Sublime Suffering

2021 ◽  
pp. 28-70
Author(s):  
Damien B. Schlarb
Keyword(s):  
Vantage Point ◽  
Human Suffering ◽  
Book Of Job ◽  
Moby Dick ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Divine Justice ◽  
Textual History ◽  
Bartleby The Scrivener ◽  
The Moment

This chapter shows how Melville draws on the book of Job to discuss issues of divine justice and human suffering. It argues that Melville uses the language and themes of Job to evaluate divine jurisprudence from the vantage point of the human plaintiff, celebrating human perseverance and indicting the arbitrariness of divinely mandated suffering. After sketching out the book of Job’s textual history, the chapter discusses in turn Mardi, Moby-Dick, “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” and The Encantadas on these grounds, detailing how Melville uses typology and intertextual reference to examine the Bible and to apply his findings to comment on natural, social, and cultural phenomena. It concludes that Melville sees the book of Job as a story not of defiance and repentance but of the learning and growth that occur in precisely the moment when one’s preconceptions and expectations of reality are shattered.

scholarly journals Probleme rondom die Bybel in die gereformeerde teologie: besinning vanuit ’n Christelike filosofie

2008 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
B. J. Van der Walt
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Church Leaders ◽  
Reformed Theology ◽  
Philosophical Approach ◽  
Philosophical Perspective ◽  
Reformed Tradition ◽  
The Bible ◽  
God's Word ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The Way

Problems with the Bible in reformed theology: reflections from a Christian philosophical perspective The motivation for undertaking this investigation is the present tension in the reformed theology and in the reformed churches in South Africa. In spite of the fact that the reformed tradition confesses the authority of the Bible, theologians and church leaders are at the moment divided on how to view and interpret the Scriptures. They disagree about the message of God’s Word in the case of topical issues, for instance whether women should be allowed in ecclesiastical offices or on what the Bible has to say about homosexuality. The author is of the opinion that these tensions in the same church are caused, not only by different methods of interpreting the Bible but, at a much deeper level, also by the way in which one views the Bible according to different worldviews. In trying to resolve these problems and the resulting conflict of opinion, a Christian philosophical approach will be taken instead of the current theological efforts.

scholarly journals What's wrong with Modern Money Theory: macro and political economic restraints on deficit-financed fiscal policy

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 472-493
Author(s):  
Thomas Palley
Keyword(s):  
Fiscal Policy ◽  
Foreign Currency ◽  
Political Resistance ◽  
Economic Costs ◽  
Fiscal Space ◽  
Fiscal Austerity ◽  
Modern Money Theory ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Foreign Currency Debt

The essential claim of Modern Money Theory (MMT) is sovereign currency issuing governments, with flexible exchange rates and without foreign currency debt, are financially unconstrained. This paper analyses the macroeconomic arguments behind that claim and shows they are suspect. MMT underestimates the economic costs and exaggerates the capabilities of deficit-financed fiscal policy. Those analytic shortcomings render it poor economics. However, MMT's claim that sovereign governments are financially unconstrained is proving a popular political polemic. That is because current distressed economic conditions have generated political resistance to fiscal austerity, and MMT fits the moment by countering the neoliberal polemic that government lacks fiscal space because it is akin to a household.

Rocking the Boat: Jonah and the New Historicism

1997 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 364-402
Author(s):  
Yvonne Sherwood
Keyword(s):  
Body Weight ◽  
Cultural Background ◽  
The Body ◽  
New Historicism ◽  
Defining Moment ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Critical Imagination ◽  
Lines Of Force

AbstractThis reading is about critical versions of texts and how they survive (or over-live) in the critical imagination. It looks at three readings of the book of Jonah, from 1550, 1781-2 and 1860, the first freezing the moment where Jonah is catapulted from the boat as the narrative's single defining moment, the second abstracting the image of Jonah looking out over Nineveh and snarling over God's change of mind, and the third zooming in on the body of the whale, its species, jawsize and body weight. In each case it is clear that the book of Jonah (and thus the Bible) is not hermetically sealed off from culture nor merely read against a cultural background, but that the "Bible" and "Society," text and context, are held in complex and reciprocal lines of force. The story of Jonah, the whale, God and the Ninevites is a stage where the transformed fears and anxieties of cultures are acted out, and gives back to society a transformed, idealised, picture of itself.

Marxism, Religion and the Taiping Revolution

2016 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 3-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roland Boer
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Religious Tradition ◽  
Revolutionary Movement ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The World ◽  
Specific Interpretation ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The Revolution

This study offers a specific interpretation of the Taiping Revolution in China in the mid-nineteenth century. It was not only the largest revolutionary movement in the world at the time, but also one that was inspired by Christianity. Indeed, it marks the moment when the revolutionary religious tradition arrived in China. My account of the revolution stresses the role of the Bible, its radical reinterpretation by the Taiping revolutionaries, and the role it played in their revolutionary acts and reconstruction of economic and social relations. After providing this account, I raise a number of implications for Marxist approaches to religion. These involve the revolutionary religious tradition, first identified by Engels and established by Karl Kautsky, the question of political ambivalence of a religion like Christianity, and the distinction between ontological and temporal transcendence.

Art and Science: or Bach as an Expositor of the Bible

1992 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 343-353
Author(s):  
W. R. Ward
Keyword(s):  
East Germany ◽  
The State ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
National Tradition ◽  
Long Time ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Moment

For a long time before dramatic recent events it has been clear that the German Democratic Republic has been in die position, embarrassing to a Marxist system, of having nothing generally marketable left except (to use the jargon) ‘superstructure’. The Luther celebrations conveniendy bolstered the implicit claim of the GDR to embody Saxony’s long-delayed revenge upon Prussia; still more conveniendy, they paid handsomely. Even the Francke celebrations probably paid their way, ruinous though his Orphan House has been allowed to become. When I was in Halle, a hard-pressed government had removed the statue of Handel (originally paid for in part by English subscriptions) for head-to-foot embellishment in gold leaf, and a Handel Festival office in the town was manned throughout the year. Bach is still more crucial, both to the republic’s need to pay its way and to the competition with the Federal Republic for the possession of the national tradition. There is no counterpart in Britain to the strength of the Passion-music tradition in East Germany. The celebrations which reach their peak in Easter Week at St Thomas’s, Leipzig, are like a cross between Wembley and Wimbledon here, the difference being that the black market in tickets is organized by the State for its own benefit. If Bach research in East Germany, based either on musicology or the Church, has remained an industry of overwhelming amplitude and technical complexity, the State has had its own Bach-research collective located in Leipzig, dedicated among other things to establishing the relation between Bach and the Enlightenment, that first chapter in the Marxist history of human liberation. Now that a good proportion of the population of the GDR seems bent on liberation by leaving the republic or sinking it, the moment seems ripe to take note for non-specialist readers of some of what has been achieved there in recent years.

scholarly journals MEMBACA TEKS KEKERASAN DALAM YOSUA 11 DAN IMPLIKASINYA BAGI KEKERASAN ATAS NAMA AGAMA DI INDONESIA

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefanus Suheru
Keyword(s):  
Social Development ◽  
Narrative Analysis ◽  
Image Of God ◽  
Religious Texts ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Divine Warrior ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
The Image Of God

AbstractThis research addresses the problem of violence in the name of religion increasingly widespread in Indonesia. Ironically, the violence is getting legitimacy of scriptural texts, including the Bible. This means, that violence is not only driven by external motives such as political, economic and social development. Internal motives can also make a major contribution, even a major problem. Violence has theological roots, one of them, related to the interpretation of religious texts which, when understood literally, is able to present the figure of a violent religion. Solutions offered in this study is the reading of narratives of violence, with the text of Joshua 11 as an example, using the method of narrative analysis. The results showed that the text of Joshua 11 violence can not justify a Christian to be violent. The image of God as the Divine Warrior is ambiguous, kherem implementation that does not ignore the grace of salvation for outsiders to be insiders, and Israel's war put the violence in the name of religion in a position that is not relevant to the lives of Indonesia plural. Violence texts as core testimonies need to be matched with texts of peace as counter testimonies.AbstrakPenelitian ini membahas masalah kekerasan atas nama agama yang semakin marak di Indonesia. Ironisnya, kekerasan ini mendapatkan legitimasi dari teks-teks kitab suci, termasuk Alkitab. Hal ini berarti, kekerasan tidak hanya dipicu oleh motif-motif eksternal seperti kepentingan politik, ekonomi dan sosial.  Motif internal juga dapat memberikan kontribusi yang besar, bahkan merupakan masalah utama.  Kekerasan memiliki akar teologis, yang salah satunya, terkait dengan interpretasi teks-teks keagamaan yang ketika dipahami secara literal, mampu menghadirkan sosok agama yang penuh kekerasan. Solusi yang penulis tawarkan dalam penelitian ini adalah pembacaan narasi kekerasan, dengan teks Yosua 11 sebagai contoh, dengan menggunakan metode analisis naratif. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa teks kekerasan Yosua 11 tidak bisa dijadikan pembenaran orang Kristen untuk melakukan kekerasan. Citra Allah sebagai Divine Warrior yang ambigu, pelaksanaan kherem yang tidak menutup anugerah keselamatan bagi outsiders sehingga menjadi insiders, dan perang Israel yang bersifat kasuistik, menempatkan kekerasan atas nama agama pada posisi yang tidak relevan dengan kehidupan Indonesia yang majemuk.Teks-teks kekerasan sebagai core testimony perlu ditandingkan dengan teks-teks perdamaian sebagai counter testimony.

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